Hacker can edit, tweak or destroy anyone’s metropolis in SimCity

YouTube user UKAzzer has found a way to edit, tweak or destroy any user’s city in SimCity, effectively bypassing EA’s DRM and giving him the ability to wreak havoc on anyone’s saved city.

UKAzzer did this by playing around with a small amount of code in order to trick the game out of observer mode when he visited someone’s city in a different region than his own. He then force-enabled edit mode on the other person’s city, effectively giving him full access to it.

This allowed him to destroy a friend’s city, quit out of it and then log back in and have the entire city still restored. According to UKAzzer’s video description this is because, “there is still no city syncing at this most basic level.” The mod apparently removes certain features like the ability to play across regions and to actually save your game though.

He warns that people with more malicious intentions could potentially find a way to make destructive city changes more permanent.

If it’s this easy to access someone else’s city and play offline, I wonder how long it will be for someone to completely crack the game’s DRM and upload the exploit as a Torrent for the world to take advantage of. Intelligent individuals have already deduced that you don’t actually have to have an internet connection to play the game like EA claims.